The HBS hosts discuss scams, cons, gig work, and what drives us to live and work at full speed.

In the immortal words of Clifford Joseph Harris, Jr. (aka, T.I.) “If you don’t respect nothing else, you will respect the hustle.” In this episode, Dr. Leigh M. Johnson takes the lead in an analysis of how “the hustle,” in all senses of that term, define our lives today. We look at the HBO docuseries Generation Hustle— which tracks the stories of 10 young scammers, con-artists, and/or sociopaths– before trying to pinpoint the economic and social conditions that make these kinds of hustles so appealing to GenY and GenZ. Then, we turn to the “side-hustle” (gig work), an increasingly necessary hustle in the lives of workers across generations. Finally, we ask: why are we working so hard and in such a hurry all the time?

Check out the links below to ideas/media/and thinkers referenced in this episode:

• HBO docuseries Generation Hustle (2021)
• Amos Barshad, “Teejayx6 Will Steal Your Identity and Rap About it” (Wired, 2019)
• Ryan Bassil, “What is scam rap?” (VICE, 2019)
• Ty Ward, “There’s Nothing Admirable About the Hustle” (HuffPost, 2015)
• S.H. Dinwiddle, “Psychopathy and sociopathy: The history of a concept” (Psychiatric Annals, 2015)
• Hillel Aron, “The Intentional Precarity of Gig Work in America” (Noema, 2021)
• Gregory Lyon, “The Long Reach of Insecure Gig Work in America” (Data for Progress, 2020)
• Kris Broda, “Gig Economy – The Economic Backbone of the Future” (Broadmin, 2021)
• “Gig Economy in the U.S.- Statistics and Facts” (Statista, 2021)
• Nandita Bose, “US Labor Secretary supports classifying gig workers as employees” (Reuters, 2021)
• Sarah Kessler, Gigged: The Gig Economy and the Future of Work (2019)
• Jeremiah Prassl, Humans as a Service: The Promise and Perils of Work in the Gig Economy (2018)